Another school year is drawing to a close, and we wish everyone a pleasant, safe, and productive summer. But before you go, as co-chairs of the organizing committee for the Caucus conference in Fall 2004, we’re excited to deliver a recent piece of good news. The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York has agreed to act as a co-sponsor for the event, which is now titled “Intersexions: Queer Visual Culture at the Crossroads.” Their signing on -- which joins the co-sponsorship offered earlier by CUNY’s Art History program -- means that our two-day conference, scheduled for the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan, will have the great benefit of CLAGS’s help with publicity, logistics, and fundraising. We will be meeting with Alisa Solomon, executive director of CLAGS, over the next few months to finalize these arrangements and continue planning.
The committee of artists, scholars, and critics who have agreed to spearhead the planning of the conference has now reached two dozen Caucus members and friends. We’re pleased with the caliber and diversity of the group, which includes (besides us two): Susan Aberth, Tee Corinne, Whitney Davis, Jennifer Doyle, Judith “Jack” Halberstam, Harmony Hammond, Happy Hyder, Jonathan David Katz, Richard Meyer, José Muñoz, Ann Pellegrini, Erica Rand, Flavia Rando, Ken Silver, Patricia Simons, James Smalls, Carmelita Tropicana, Jonathan Weinberg, Carla Williams, and Terry Wolverton.
The conference aims to bring together artists, historians, critics and curators with an interest in queer visual culture, from as wide a geographic and cultural range as possible. It will provide a forum for the voices and images of contemporary practitioners in all media, and for new developments in art-historical research, criticism and theory, museums and galleries. It will also feature a wide range of performance events, artists’ talks, and an associated exhibition. If you have ideas for events, panels, papers, exhibits, or performances, please contact the co-chairs or any committee member.
Inquiries into all areas of LGBTQ visual culture are welcome, but we particularly wish to encourage projects that engage with three broad cultural issues that have special repercussions for queer arts and art history. One is globalization, another the proliferation of new media. Thirdly, we encourage examinations of the current state of our own methods and assumptions, and their relationship to our political and social context. Among panels that have been proposed are: a roundtable on performance art, Lesbians in Popular Culture, Transgender Imagery in Contemporary Art and Film, Making Queer Theory (And Its History) Visual, Art of the Black Gay Diaspora, Queer Pedagogy, Queer Net Culture: Potentials and Pitfalls, and Historiography of Queer Cultural Studies (or, Forgetting Foucault). We would also like to feature sessions on non-western civilizations, and on the intersections of queer and post-colonial theory, for which we welcome organizers and papers.
In related news, the two of us have teamed up to present a two-lecture mini-series on queer arts at New York’s LGBT Community Center, as part of the kickoff to Gay Pride Month. Due to press deadlines for the newsletter, we can’t tell you here how they went over at the box office, but here’s the schedule: May 27, Jim on “Gay Art in New York, From Whitman to Wojnarowicz”; June 3, Maura on “When Girls Were Boys: Transgender Imagery in Contemporary Art.” Please come if you can and/or spread the word. This mini-series seemed to us like a good way to raise both consciousness and funds; the profits will go toward the ’04 “Intersexions” conference. We encourage any of you who would like to help with the conference, or the caucus as a whole, to think about doing such benefit lectures, panels, or performances in your own backyards. We charged $7, but even a more modest donation could put a few hundred dollars in our coffers, which would be a big help towards mailing costs and events at the annual conference.
On another note: After many years at the helm, Sallie McCorkle has stepped down as Treasurer of the Caucus. She has been an indispensable asset to the caucus for many years, and we are sad to see her go. But we know there is another caucus member out there willing to take on this important, but not overly time-consuming task. The volunteer position entails receiving membership dues, keeping the mailing list current, and managing the budget. If you are interested, please contact one of the Co-Chairs.
Lastly, we would like to send our personal sympathy to Beverly Brown and her partner, our newsletter co-editor Tee Corinne, and wish Beverly a speedy recovery from her recent illness. Our hearts are with them both.
Warmly,
Maura Reilly maurareilly@yahoo.com
Jim Saslow saslowj@aol.com